Catch Up With Dickens

The great great great grand-daughter of Charles Dickens, author Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, is to give a talk about the man behind the classic novels at His Majesty’s Theatre in Aberdeen this November.

She will give a pre-show talk to ticket holders prior to the matinee performance of Great Expectations on Thursday, November 8 at 12.30pm.

Two centuries after his birth, Dickens remains one of Britain’s most enduring celebrities and Lucinda will outline the extraordinary life of the man who wrote the many powerful novels which are now part of our culture, and the inspiration behind Great Expectations.

She and Bruce Athol MacKinnon are setting up The Dickens Trust, as a way of distributing funds to charities and other organisations who support social and community works that Charles Dickens was particularly passionate about.

Ranging from access to education to penal reform, many of the issues within Dickensian Britain still exist today 200 years on.

The new adaptation of Great Expectations will be staged at HMT from Tuesday to Saturday, November 6 to 10 and will star Coronation Street and Bad Girls star Jack Ellis, alongside Chris Ellison (The Bill), Paul Nivison and Paula Wilcox (Emmerdale, The Smoking Room and Man About the House).

The UK tour begins at Richmond Theatre on September 13 and Aberdeen is the only Scottish date.